


bread and butter

by hungry_hobbits



Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: Baking, Baking is such a good love language, Fluff, M/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:54:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25285711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hungry_hobbits/pseuds/hungry_hobbits
Summary: the bread recipe was from his mother, but she's gone. and now only two people know it.
Relationships: Hugo Stiglitz/Wilhelm Wicki
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	bread and butter

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill for longwalk-shortpier (tumblr) / Falterbehind (ao3) - "baking bread for me"
> 
> i have a great deal of feelings about wicki and bread and implications of his life from just before the war, as you will see

“She’d bake for me when I was sick.”

Hugo watched from the table in Wicki’s little apartment as he kneaded dough, he could tell how therapeutic it was to do just from how relaxed Wicki became.

Hugo followed Wicki from the backwoods of France to the unfamiliar terrain of America. He had nowhere to go post-war; what remained of his family did not want him, and Germany would not take him. Wicki held out his hand to the rogue soldier and offered him a home. The space Wicki made for himself in the wake of leaving his own homeland had slowly become theirs, and with the melding came a comfort in which the Austrian felt he could finally open up.

“It was how she told me she loved me; a warm plate of bread and a glass of milk.”

Wicki previously spoke little of his family or his time in America before he joined the military. The Basterds would talk of what they would do when they got home; hugging their mothers, going to university, taking over the family business. But Wicki did not join, and Hugo had just as little to add.

Hugo did not prod, knew Wicki would tell him things in his own time, for he knew the man’s story was not a happy one. Wicki always did the most talking when he baked. He spoke about pieces of his life; where he grew up, his Bar Mitzvah, his mother’s garden, what tobacco his father smoked in the evening, the day he left Salzburg, the last phone call from his aunt.

Hugo watched Wicki’s hands, so gentle in the dough. Those same hands, the ones that silently took life and tended wounds just as easily. He watched the care put into every step, steps that came from memory. If Wicki had the recipe written down, Hugo had no idea where, he never saw the man pull it out once.

Wicki was roused from his sleep when Hugo padded softly in the room and groggily he fought the bleariness in his eyes so that he might better acknowledge him. He had gone back to bed that morning, a fever in the night left him exhausted. Hugo, wanting him to rest, occupied himself with an important task that kept him stowed away in the kitchen most of the afternoon. When Wicki was finally sitting up, the German presented him with a plate; several bread slices, fresh and warm, the smell like a switch in his brain, waking him up.

“This…” Wicki tore a piece in half, relishing in the smell, “Hugo?”

“It is not perfect,” Hugo started, setting the plate on the bedside table before sitting next to Wicki, “you measure everything by sight. Took a few tries.”

“You did this… for me?”

“Who else would I make it for?”

Wicki cried, which startled Hugo and made him run through the list of things he could have done wrong to cause this reaction – until he realized Wicki was smiling.

“No one has made me bread since I left Austria,” he wiped his eyes, “when I had to make it myself the first time, it made me feel so horribly alone.” Hugo nodded at the implications.

The German struggled momentarily, searching for his words. In that time he slipped an arm around Wicki, resting his hand on the man’s slender wrist, “I am not your mother, but,” Hugo wiped tears from Wicki’s face with the pad of his thumb, “I love you. So I will make you bread and you will not have to ask for it either.” Everyone had their own sort of love language, and if telling Wicki he loved him meant learning to bake then Hugo would practice every day of his life just to make the man happy.

Wicki bit into the bread, a muffled pleased sound escaping him mixing with the tears still streaming down his face. He rested against Hugo and ate his fill and felt like a little boy again for the first time in years; loved and safe.

**Author's Note:**

> original inspiration came from when i read the inglourious basterds wiki page on sandwiches believe it or not
> 
> hungry-hobbits.tumblr.com


End file.
